Thank you to everyone who came out to the Emerald City con in Seattle! We had fun at the TopatoCo Castle and especially at the TMH Live pre-party. I’m very much looking forward to sharing the video of the event with you, as soon as it’s ready!

I also wanted to give a special thank-you to Shari for this wonderful sketch:

You may remember Shari’s spirited prequel to this comic. These are the sorts of things that arise when I livestream the comic-makin’ process! We get to chatting while I’m putting the comics together, and every little piece that goes into the work gets an elaborate backstory. Shari’s piece made me wonder just how Strivey got himself into that pickle in the first place…

It was an ordinary day for Strivey. He’d heard there might be some lettuce underneath the back porch of the big blue house, so he took a wide, ambling stroll around the side of the building, finding sure footing in the grass as the sun paced him. He liked to time his walks with the sun this way, keeping steadily in that pleasing light, and he fancied himself an escort for that old yellow friend, showing him the way across the old footbridge over the course of an afternoon, or around a large tree, or behind a big blue house.

But today, as they walked slowly and carefully together, the sun managed to tangle itself behind a stand of scraggly branches, and no amount of Strivey’s coaxing could urge it back out. It happened this way often, to Strivey’s chagrin and despite all his urging, and usually it took all night for the big lunkhead to free himself and meet Strivey sheepishly back in the morning. Strivey would shake his small, wrinkled head, and the sun would start to shine brighter and brighter as if saying “I know, I know,” and then they would go on a long walk again.

Today was no different. So by the time Strivey reached the deck behind the big blue house, it was dim; and even though the dimness of evening is never the best time to look for lettuce that might be hiding, he’d come this far, and he was hungry. He peered about in the deck’s corners and crevices, and when nothing was evident beneath the deck he managed to make his way on top of it, and then from there into the house itself, and from there down a long hallway and into a room which was emitting a bright glow as if the sun had beat him there. “That crafty devil managed to sneak in ahead of me,” thought Strivey, as he nosed his way through the doorway.

The sun was smaller in person, a tiny glass figure shouting fiercely at a woman’s leering face. Immediately Strivey knew something was wrong — for his friend’s light, though bright, was not warm, having been trapped within this bulb of glass like a genie captured in a bottle, and the woman was the trapper.

Strivey tried to turn back and flee, but he was, after all, a tortoise, and a sprint back toward the hall took him about twenty minutes.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2010 at 2:08 am and is filed under Blog.
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